This is the third time I got the error after 3 reinstallations. Strange thing is that during one of my earlier installation, it was okie. Not sure if I selected any different options or package or did a step differently.

Just to give a bit more details, adaptec 1420 SATA2 Raid is not supported by CentOS by default, I have compiled and driver disk.

While running yum update, I notice there are a couple of kernel related updates. (Not sure if the kernel I have in my cd is the latest since I download it 5-6 weeks ago.) I wonder if the Raid driver died because of the kernel update?

How can I tell? How do I troubleshoot this issue?
I am a newbie, thus any suggestions and advice will be appreciated.

hi there. i have nearly the same problem w/ Linux Fedora Core 5. (screen shot of viewing the drive from another, working FC5. i don't know if this "means" anything. on Win, i might meansomething more to me-- ie-- the MBR is gone or something, but i don't know anything about how the Filesystem can or can not be destroyed: http://tinyurl.com/qdfrm )

why destroyed? my problem seems to be a result of commandline operations in which i attempted to move files while using the dot-slash-asterisk shortcut

note that very last part. beyond there, i lost all command line function. (ie. @locahost /]# ls -l error: there is no such directory / no such bash command, etc)
so, i restarted, and ended up w/ this Kernal panic.

since i have no way of getting into "anything" (except grub, and i do have the "rescue disk")-- how do i go about "fixing" this problem? meaing-- i hear all this about "recompile the Kernel"... that's fine, but From where? the Grub command line? i just don't understand where i'm supposed to be executing commands at this point. if i can figure that out, i'll probably be okay-- or at least able to try stuff. right now, i'm lookin' at the grub> and i know not what to do.
btw: standalone FC5 40GB . it had an xp drive slaved from /mnt/windows/ at the time of malfucntion, but i can't see that would have an effect.

actually, not the case. further investigation today using the rescue disk again proved that all of my data is still there. i used the:

Code:

..sh# linux restore

from the commandline utility on the rescue disk. browsing through there, i had an option to look for the location of my "driver image" (or some such drivers/ files ... i forget the true name), and i saw all of my stuff in those directories-- including both original partitions made by the original install. i browsed down through those folders, and sure enough-- my directories are visible.

although, i would otherwise have been inclinded to agree w/ you based on the thought that renaming the ./* would do who-knows-what kind of damage.

i was advised elsewhere to mount the drive and see what i could do from there. based on what you can see from my screen capture, how do i go about "safely" mounting that drive (read-only maybe?) so i can at least get a better look at it? i'm assuming the screen shot shows an "unmounted" drive?
EDIT: in case it's not been mentioned, i'm on FC5 now, just a different hard drive-- and the "faulty drive" is attached as "slave"

i was advised elsewhere to mount the drive and see what i could do from there. based on what you can see from my screen capture, how do i go about "safely" mounting that drive (read-only maybe?) so i can at least get a better look at it? i'm assuming the screen shot shows an "unmounted" drive?
EDIT: in case it's not been mentioned, i'm on FC5 now, just a different hard drive-- and the "faulty drive" is attached as "slave"

Click to expand...

You could boot from a Knoppix Live-CD ( http://www.knoppix.org/ ) - it automatically mounts the hard drives in read mode, so you could attach a USB HDD and save your data to the USB hard drive, and afterwards I'd simply reinstall the whole system.

EDIT: BTW, thanks for the resourceful idea. it's unfortunate however that the amount of data vs size of my USB media renders that particular solution impractical-- but at least i know the option is there!

I do happen to have an Ubuntu CD-ROM (newest... dapper dan i think), and i'm pretty sure it runs as a LIVE cd. would that be sufficient for the same purpose?